Sexist Language

Despite decades of feminist consciousness-raising, sexist language still exists in our culture. Gender-specific titles and pronouns can subtly influence sexism as well as our thoughts and expectations about gender roles and appropriate occupations and goals for the sexes.

What Is Sexist Language?

Sexist language is language that excludes either men or women when discussing a topic that is applicable to both sexes. This includes using the word man to refer to humanity, and using titles like Congressman and fireman. Another common error that shows gender bias is assuming that the subject of all sentences is male. For instance, the statement "Each student chose his own topic for his term paper," leads the reader to assume that all the students in the class were male, despite the probability that half of them were female.

Underlying sexist language is gender bias, which can occur consciously or unconsciously. When unconscious, the gender bias in language can be considered to be the product of society: other people use sexist language, and repetition normalizes it until the speaker unconsciously produces his or her own sexist language where men are the norm and women the "other".

Why to Avoid Sexist Language

Sexist language encourages discrimination and can discourage people from pursuing their dreams. If engineers are always spoken of as male, a girl who aspires to be an engineer may feel that she has no hope, since "all" engineers are men.

Sexist language also offends people when they find themselves excluded. This is not an issue that violates your right to free speech; you are free to use offensive language, and also free to decide that you do not agree with the aforementioned definition of what constitutes sexist language. However, if you are using language that is offensive to half of your audience, you will not get your message across. People will not be receptive to your arguments if they are aggrieved by your use of exclusively masculine pronouns.

How to Avoid Sexist Language

Remember that the goal is not to avoid referring to individual people as male or female; the goal is to be inclusionary when speaking in hypothetical statements or of mixed-gender groups.

• Use humanity or the human race instead of man or mankind when you are referring to all people.
• If you are speaking of a single hypothetical individual, use person instead of man.
• Use genderless titles whenever possible, such as flight attendant instead of stewardess, firefighter instead of fireman, and homemaker instead of housewife. Avoid adding gender markers to genderless titles, such as male nurse; use the genderless title alone (i.e., nurse).
• Rework sentences in the plural to avoid gendered pronouns and possessive adjectives. This will create smoother and more grammatically correct prose than using a plural pronoun with a singular subject. (Sexist: Each student makes up his own schedule. Grammatically incorrect: Each student makes up their own schedule. Gender-neutral and grammatically correct: Students make up their own schedules.)

• When it is not possible to recast sentences in the plural, use he or she or his or her to be inclusive. (The winning contestant must claim his or her prize by Tuesday.) However, using this formulation too often can break up the flow of your writing, so use it sparingly.

Note: Do not take gender-inclusivity to extremes; each specific individual has a gender, and can be referred to in that way. Likewise, some biological facts apply only to women or only to men. If you are writing a paper on giving birth, you should not refer to your subject as "a pregnant woman or man".

Conclusion

The use of sexist language undermines the American goal of a non-discriminatory, inclusive society. There are simple ways to avoid using language that can offend and marginalize half the people on earth, so writers should take care to use gender-inclusive language.